


Slow Dance

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Genre: Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-10
Updated: 2011-07-10
Packaged: 2017-10-21 05:53:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/221665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>On July 8th, 1965, Illya Kuryakin will disappear.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow Dance

_July 8th, 1965, 11.34pm_

"It's time," Illya says, and jumps off the roof. He rises, backwards, occluding the stars and the city lights, turns head over heels, and falls.

*

 

 _December 27th, 1964, 8.30am_

"Gentlemen," Waverly says. "Thank you for coming."

He sits back behind his desk, his fingers coming together in contemplative steeples. Illya and Napoleon exchange glances. The sounds of the city drift up from the street, distant laughter from elsewhere in the building slips under the door. The silence stretches.

Finally, Napoleon says, "Is there something we can do for you, sir?"

Waverly sighs. "It's difficult to admit," he says, slowly, "to your own fallibility. To the fallibility of your own organisation."

"Excuse me?" Napoleon asks. Illya stares straight ahead.

Waverly sighs again. "The security on this building is among the best in the world," he says. "On this room, even more so. And yet." He opens his desk drawer and pulls out an envelope. "And yet, I discover this on my desk. In this building, where nothing passes unnoticed by UNCLE. In this room."

"How can we help, sir?" Napoleon asks. From the expression on his face, he's thinking of plots and counter-plots, ransom demands, moles within the ranks. The things he's paid to think about. Illya stares straight ahead.

"For a start, Mr. Solo, you can open this. It's been checked for toxicology," Waverly adds.

Napoleon takes the envelope, wonderingly. It's large, probably the largest available standard size, and "Napoleon Solo" is written in the corner in bland, even letters, disguising someone's handwriting.

Illya says, "Why would a letter to you be hidden in Mr. Waverly's desk?"

Napoleon slits it open with a fingernail and another, smaller envelope drops out, and a piece of paper flutters to the floor. "Do not open until necessary," he reads.

Illya reaches down for the paper and holds it up for them both to see.

 _On July 8th, 1965, Illya Kuryakin will disappear._

*

 _[??:??] [waiting for data]_

"What time is it?" A breathless enquiry: they're moving as fast as they can.

"I don't know!" Illya shouts back, and holds up both hands to the sky. "What the," he says, "what the hell is wrong with this thing" – and he waves it in a figure-eight pattern, concentrating, concentrating.

Pan back: a city street, people dressed in bright colours and carrying banners and flags, a summer's day in New York City; pan back: the roar of the crowd is getting softer, the colours merging into one bright mass; pan back: the cityscape, the grid system, the harbour; pan back: the North American coastline; pan back: to where satellites coast in the black along the curve of the earth.

At 36th Street and Madison Avenue, the noise level is rising.

"What's the hold-up?" Another breathless question. Napoleon, always in a hurry. "Trust you to do this on the weekend of _Pride_ , Illya..."

"I wasn't exactly responsible for my actions at the time!"

Napoleon laughs, a little tensely. "Seriously, what's the hold-up? We must get to him before anyone else does..."

"I'm well aware of that, thank you, and doing this from memory is hardly, how do you say it, a _cakewalk_. The problem is the-"

Satellites, far above, suddenly roll and shift into place.

"GPS." Illya blinks. The bars leap up on the tiny screen, the pointer drops. "Got him. Run!"

*

 _July 9th, 1965, 12.40am_

"What do you mean, he didn't hit the ground?" The police chief is looking irate. "We got a dozen witnesses say they saw a man jump off a building at 41st and Third. We got guys working late who said they saw him fall past the window, God help us all."

Napoleon flashes his UNCLE ID and leaves the room. He's got things to do.

*

 _[day]_

There's no watch on his wrist. It's dark.

"He's coming around." A strangely familiar voice, warm, amused. "I'll leave him to you, if you think it's best."

There's the sound of a door closing. He strains to hear anything else informative, any other noise, but there's only a curious, dead absence, as though he's on the wrong side of layers of soundproofing. Hideously, he's naked save certain accoutrements. He reaches up, touches cloth bound over his eyes.

A new voice says, "Illya, don't touch that."

That voice raises hairs on the back of his neck.

"Are you all right? Are you comfortable?"

His hands aren't tied. He uses them to check himself for blood, for other damage. There are bruises, but nothing worse. He nods despite himself.

"You can speak, you know," the voice continues. "Now. English, or is this more comfortable?"

Belatedly, Illya realises he's been addressed in Russian thus far. "English," he rasps, mouth dry. With surprise, he realises a glass of water is being pressed to his lips.

"Stubborn son of a bitch," says the voice, comfortably, in English, and the glass is taken away. "Now, if I recall, you're going to be here with us for around eight hours. During that time – Illya, don't touch that."

This time, a hand grasps his and takes it away from the blindfold, then strokes his hair. The touch isn't intimate or threatening, but casual.

"During that time," the voice continues, "we'll find ways to keep you... occupied."

Instinctively, his body arches away from the surface beneath it, and the speaker chuckles. "I meant, I'll read to you. But don't touch that. If I let you see anything, anything at all, the consequences will be unpleasant."

He lifts a hand, but doesn’t touch his eyes.

"Illyusha." The voice has softened, and then drops back into affectionate, colloquial Russian. "You recognise my voice, don't you?"

Illya recognises his voice.

*

 _July 9th, 1965, 7.50am_

"I heard," says an agent over breakfast, "that he didn't even use his tools. Just sat there in the interrogation room and _looked_ at him till he cracked."

Napoleon is several floors above, holding a THRUSH operative up by the scruff of the neck. "Now. Tell Mr. Waverly what you told me."

Waverly looks up with mild interest. "Good morning, Mr. Solo."

"Good morning, sir." Napoleon gives the man a kick. "Nicely, now."

The operative droops. He looks down at his boots. Napoleon kicks him again and he says, "The machine was developed by scientists in Argentina. It was intended to allow the operator to travel to any point in time. It required access to, ah" – Napoleon stirs his foot – "lightning storms. We placed it on the roof."

"A time machine?" Waverly peers at Napoleon. "THRUSH had developed a time machine?"

"Ah, no." Napoleon inhales and the operative carries on addressing the ground beneath his feet. "No, sir. It wasn't effective. The test subjects were merely moved around to random points in their own timeline, and returned eventually to their point of origin some time later."

Waverly frowns. "This is the machine that was used on Mr. Kuryakin as he was being advanced upon by THRUSH operatives?"

"Yes," Napoleon says, when it becomes clear that the captive is too overcome to speak for the moment.

"So, we must wait for Mr. Kuryakin to reappear where he was taken?"

"Ah. No, sir." The THRUSH man groans. "They were returned not to their point of origin precisely, but somewhere… in the vicinity."

"How close?"

"We don't know." The man groans again as Napoleon shifts his grip.

"Could we not make inquiries of the test subjects?" Waverly asks.

Napoleon says, "Tell him."

"The test subjects. were rats, sir."

"If Illya rematerialises a hundred feet in the air above Third Avenue, I will destroy you," Napoleon says, conversationally, and kicks him again.

*

 _[night]_

Illya comes to in his own apartment, which is convenient; he checks his own clock and his own calendar, he peers at his own unmade, empty bed. He steals his own stationery from his own desk, finds his fountain pen. He remembers which items of clothing were missing and takes those out, pauses for a slug of vodka from the freezer, and heads out into the night.

Music filters through into Del Floria's as he makes his way through. The party buzzes with conversation, all cocktail dresses and cocktail glasses, glitter, sequins, sparkling wine. Illya strides forwards, confident. From the turn of his head, Napoleon's surprised to see him. "Illya! Couldn't you get a cab?"

"I forgot," Illya murmurs, letting the sentence drop, scanning the room. "Glinda," he says, very softly, and she turns, wearing rose-red lipstick and a black dress, cigarette held between two elegant fingers. Mr. Waverley's personal secretary. One of them. She's beautiful, Illya has always thought.

"Illya" – and her voice has layers in it like a champagne truffle.

"Oh," comes Napoleon's voice from somewhere, "you _forgot_ something."

"A merry Christmas," Illya says softly in her ear, "to you, my dear."

It's a slow dance, building to something, and she leads, twirls, dips him. He lets his body be manipulated, feet falling naturally into rhythm. "You want something," she whispers into his hair. "What do you want?"

"What do you want," he breathes in return, "that I can give you?"

"I don't need to trade for what I want, Illya." She comes to a stop and holds him in place. He allows himself to be pinned. "But in the spirit of the season…"

He draws a hand inside his jacket, pulls out the envelope. "Mr. Waverly's desk. On the top, ready for him to find."

"Not much of a want, Illya. Why don't you do it yourself?"

"Let us say," Illya tells her, kissing his fingers and touching them to her lips, "time is not on my side."

"Ah," she says, quietly, "time."

*

 _November 4th, 1965, 2.30pm_

"I'm not disputing," Waverly says, "that there is a certain grim efficiency to your work at present, Mr. Solo."

"Yes, sir." Napoleon holds himself entirely still.

"I merely… have concerns."

"Yes, sir."

"This affair in Lithuania, for example. Was it necessary " – Waverly pulls some files towards him across the desk – "to incapacitate every THRUSH operative within half a kilometre of the base site? For an agent travelling alone, it introduces risk. And from the report it appears that you disarmed the device within a few minutes of your arrival, which suggests volumes about how much of a threat those operatives posed."

"Yes, sir."

"And then there was the affair in Washington, DC – again, I commend the dedication with which you resolved matters. But again, I find myself astounded by the decimation of the THRUSH ranks."

"Yes, sir."

"Mr. Solo," Waverly says gently, "we will find your partner. And wherever he is now, I remind you that Mr. Kuryakin is a greatly resourceful man."

Napoleon says, "Yes, sir."

*

 _[twilight]_

There is a man standing three hundred yards away who has not moved a muscle in four minutes, and he's holding a gun.

It's not a professional job. Illya is making notes in his head concerning the lack of proper stealth procedure, the sloppy way the rifle is being held, the lack of precision in taking aim. Illya is holding back and holding back, and Napoleon has come from the Soviet Union by way of a scheduled airliner, a taxi, a boat, a cow-truck, not in that order, from an affair Illya remembers with snapshot clarity, and he's exhausted and unseeing and Illya is holding back.

Napoleon takes a step and Illya slips out, drops and rolls, lifts his weapon and fires. The assassin topples over, out of his line of sight. Illya takes two breaths and stands up. Napoleon opens the door and the bell rings.

"Oh," he says, stepping backwards at the threshold. "I... thought I saw you crossing the street, further along. Perhaps I saw someone who looked like you?"

"Quite likely," Illya says, and shifts slightly, uncomfortable in his clothes, now covered in street dust. It's almost embarrassingly easy to stun UNCLE agents within their own HQ, drag them into cupboards and strip them of clothing and weapons. He adds another mental note concerning proposals for improved security, and wishes for a pained moment that he weren't the smallest adult male agent for UNCLE New York. He did look, contemplatively, at the women, but some inner voice of moral nicety with his mother's accent made him decide against it, and in any case their shoes were ominous.

"In any case" – can it be Napoleon, urbane and charming, with this awkwardness in his eyes, this stilted quality to his words – "it was a pleasure working with you on this mission, Mr. Kuryakin. I hope it will be a regular arrangement."

"Likewise." Illya nods at him, appraising. Napoleon is young and he wants to do well and he isn't sure yet what to do with Waverley's pet project from across the Iron Curtain.

Unsure, and open-minded. It will do. Illya leaves a message.

*

 _November 7th, 1965, 8.30am_

His desk calendar has been handled by someone with grubby fingers. In familiar scrawl, Napoleon reads: _courage, mon ami._

*

 _June 27th, 2011, 4.13pm_

"He's gone," Illya says, and Napoleon comes out from wherever he was hiding. The room is quiet, the sunshine filtering in through the curtains. There are discarded plates and utensils scattered over the surfaces, and several books face-down on the floor. Illya follows his gaze and shrugs at the mess. "I didn't like to leave him."

There are only two people in the room. On the futon, there are the dips and humps left by a body, a tied blindfold lying on one side. They stand in silence for a few moments. "Done?" Napoleon asks, softly.

Illya isn't looking at him, gazing out the window at the sunlit world. "I told him where I'd found him. Where you'd find him."

"And?"

"And I read aloud." Illya smiles, a little wistfully. The way he's standing, with the late-evening light falling across his face and hair, makes him seem distant, fey. "Nothing more. The long way around will come to have its charms."

"The long way around?"

Illya twirls on the spot, arms up like the hands of a clock. "Long, long way."

Napoleon sighs and grins at him, and something eases in the space between them. He picks up the nearest book curiously and says, "You read him _David Copperfield_?"

Illya looks defensive. "I like it. I liked it."

"Clearly," Napoleon says, with affection, and hands him the book. "There are many ways in which you haven't changed, my friend."

"Clearly," Illya says, with sarcasm, and picks up from where he left off.

*

And then he's drowning – crushing weight and pressure filling his ears, nose and mouth, he's falling, backwards into the murk, somersaulting, his own weight is killing him and he opens his mouth to shout "Napoleon!" and then water rushes in and he's

*

leaning against the door in a room thick with summer heat, with muslin curtains flapping at the window, tangled white sheets falling off the bed, and discarded clothing on the floor, and there's the abrupt jerk backwards of a head, a flash of blonde hair, sweat-darkened, and his own eyes when he comes and

*

this is the crunch and chill of snow packed against his back, this is the sound of flames crackling, and here is the rumble through the ground of advancing jackboots in pairs and rows and legions and he's running, he's running, he's shivering, he's running, he's freezing, a voice is shouting, _Illyusha, run!_ and

*

cold.

*

 _December 10th, 1965, 6.20pm_

Napoleon has to ask the question. "Why's he..."

"Because," says the THRUSH man, and stops. Napoleon nudges him and he answers, unwillingly. "The machine can transport human flesh," he mutters. "Nothing else."

They came prepared for the eventuality. Napoleon forces himself not to run into the alley, wraps Illya in blankets and picks him up, carrying him to the waiting car and settling him in beside himself. The car purrs its way into traffic, with another behind them taking care of the informant. "You shouldn't be wandering around with no clothes on, not in New York in December," Napoleon says, cheerfully. "You'd have frozen to death by morning, if we hadn't known where to look."

"Envelope," Illya says, eyes closed.

"'Open when necessary,'" Napoleon agrees, still cheerfully. "It was an address, a time, a date."

Illya nods and puts his head on Napoleon's shoulder. "Good."

"In your handwriting, my friend," Napoleon continues, and grins. "I'll take you home and you can find some clothes, and then you can tell me about it over dinner, how about that? Illya, open your eyes."

Illya opens his eyes.

"Name, UNCLE designation?" Napoleon snaps out.

"Illya Nickovetch Kuryakin, Section Two, Number Two. And if I were impersonating me, I wouldn't be so asinine as not to know that, thank you, Napoleon."

"I missed you, too," Napoleon says, fondly. "Italian?"

"Borscht." Illya is oddly emphatic. "What year is it?" he asks.

"1965," Napoleon says, gently.

"Good," he says again, and puts his head back on Napoleon's shoulder. "There were other places," he adds.

"I figured." Napoleon sounds unsure of himself, suddenly, aware of something in the air between them. "You're okay, Illya? All right to go home?"

"Long way," Illya says, to no one in particular, and the city lights blur and stretch comfortingly around his head.


End file.
